


His Chair

by OctarineSparks



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:43:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctarineSparks/pseuds/OctarineSparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking at it was hard. Moving it was almost harder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Chair

Sherlock isn't really drunk. He certainly isn't high. He's had a few drinks, perhaps a few too many, but he's really drunk on anger and pain. 

He gets to his feet and looks at it. A piece of furniture. Nothing more. 

So why is it breaking his heart?

He grits his teeth and shoves the bloody chair a few feet to the left. Nearer the door. Away from his line of sight. It smells like dust. It doesn't smell like John anymore. 

It screeches across the floorboards noisily but he doesn't stop. He pushes it even nearer to the door, away from that which still remains and closer to all that was left behind. 

It's a cumbersome thing, bulky and awkward and useless now. He can feel sweat beginning to form at his temples, and his back, still marked from all those months ago, is protesting at the exertion. But it doesn't matter. It's even welcome, the mindless labour that clouds the agony in his head. 

He reaches an obstacle when it comes to getting the damn thing through the doorway. He doesn't remember it being brought in, he isn't even sure if it was his in the first place, or just some left over bit of furniture from the previous tenant. He squares his jaw and manages to manoeuvre it through the frame at an awkward angle. For a moment he fears he has gotten it stuck, and he laughs at the irony of being trapped inside Baker Street by the physical memory of what John left behind. But then all at once the chair is free, and Sherlock stumbles comically forward, catching his shoulder painfully against the wood. 

Once he has made his way into the hallway, he straightens up to catch his breath and looks at upon the stairs to John's old room in much the way a climber contemplates a mountain. It's sixteen more steps, nothing even close to impossible, but it isn't the effort of dragging the chair up them that scares Sherlock. It's what is waiting for him at the top. 

When John first left, he had filled his confused mind with plans. An extra room meant more space for his experiments, and the possibility of the kitchen table actually being free from body parts and chemicals for a change. He had tried to feel excited at the prospect, but it was just another change. Another thing new and wrong in the place that had stopped feeling so much like home. 

He places his hands on the back of the chair, his long, thin fingers digging into the faded fabric and uneven stuffing. It feels strange; like a loveless grasp on something else, something he can't hold onto, no matter how hard he tries. 

He pulls it up the stairs, the short legs of the chair bumping harshly against each step. He wants to stop after the fourth stair, but he knows that if he does, the adrenalin will leave him and the hollow ache will return. So he carries on, making a racket of furniture against wood and his own grunts of exertion, until he is at the top. 

For a moment, he pauses, a grim tableau of a man and his memories. John's absence felt like a bereavement, and he looks back down at the stairs, his mind reeling back to the way he looked down at John from that rooftop all those years ago. 

He feels a tug in his chest, like a blade of ice slicing right through his heart, and he breaks, his sobs loud and convulsive, and he can't quite stop. He leans on the chair for support, feels his knees give way beneath him as he collapses into its seat. He is twisted to one side, his face pressed to the back as he brings his legs up beneath him, like a wounded animal howling at death. 

He stays there for a while, until the sobs subside and he is just still, his eyes closed and sore, the fabric wet with tears. Then he sniffs, shakes his head and gets up. He is being ridiculous. Pathetic and stupid and lonely. It doesn't suit him, and he hates it. 

He opens the door to John's old room with his back to it, not daring to look inside, and then shoves the chair fully into the room with his head bowed. He keeps his eyes close to spare his heart, and shuts the door with a slam that will echo in his mind for weeks. 

Then he walks downstairs without seeing where he is going, back into his flat where he presses himself to the door and breathes deeply. Then he turns around, sees the space where the chair once was, where John once was, and crumbles to the floor. 

It's changed nothing. The flat is still haunted. He crawls to his own chair and falls into it, curled up against the emptiness, the loneliness, and the ghost of John Watson.


End file.
